 |
| A Myanmar security officer walks past burned Rohingya houses in Ka Nyin Tan village of suburb Maungdaw, northern Rakhine state of western Myanmar, Sept. 6, 2017. (Photo by= AP) |
[Asia News = Reporter Reakkana] DAKAR: Representatives of Myanmar's junta are expected to challenge the jurisdiction of the World Court to hear allegations the country committed genocide against its Rohingya minority in a fresh round of hearings from Feb 21, the attorney general of the Gambia, which brought the case, told Reuters on Friday (Jan 14). "A hybrid hearing (is) set to commence on Feb 21, 2022," Gambian Attorney General Dawda Jallow said, Reuters reported.
He added that Aung San Suu Kyi, who led Myanmar's defense at the first public hearings in 2019 but has since been deposed by the military, had been formally replaced as its top representative in the case. A hybrid hearing is a procedure where some of the participants are present in person and others participate online due to COVID-19 measures. More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar after a military-led crackdown in 2017 and were forced into squalid camps across the border in Bangladesh.
UN investigators concluded that the military campaign had been executed with "genocidal intent". An ICJ spokesperson declined to confirm dates for a new hearing had been scheduled. In December 2019 Nobel peace prize laureate Suu Kyi, then Myanmar's civilian leader, personally attended hearings at The Hague to ask judges to dismiss the case.
